Censored for nothing, DJs agree

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/01/2011 (5388 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The man who wants to be prime minister says we’re in dire straits if we start messing around with iconic pop songs.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff told a media scrum covering the Winnipeg stop on his national tour that he doesn’t like the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council’s censorship of Dire Straits’ Grammy Award-winning song, Money for Nothing.

“I thought it was a great song when I first heard it and I still think it’s a great song. Though you’ve got to look back at those lyrics again, they were written for a particular time. But I don’t like censorship,” he said.

The CBSC ruled the song unfit for radio earlier this week because of the use of the word “faggot” in the lyrics.

Even Dire Straits keyboardist Guy Fletcher weighed in on his personal website, responding to fans’ questions by calling the decision “unbelievable” and referencing a conversation with the song’s writer, Mark Knopfler.

“Mark tells me that due to the ban, he has now substituted the word faggot for ‘fudger’…. for Canada,” Fletcher wrote. “I reckon Canada could ban about 75 per cent of all records ever made.”

The response from the local radio scene ranged from frustration to anger to resignation.

Matt Cundill, program director for Power 97, said the rock station will play the edited version of the song from now on but his listeners aren’t happy about it.

“Most of our audience, which is 40 years old, understands the context of that song. That was part of the fun. That’s what old people used to say about MTV,” he said. “Money for Nothing is MTV, that’s the soundtrack of a generation. It’s a song people are very attached to.”

Cundill said listeners haven’t complained about One In A Million by Guns N’ Roses or the Pogues’ Fairy Tale in New York, because they’re more obscure.

The decision came out of the blue for many radio people, according to Howard Kroeger, a Winnipeg-based radio consultant. He said he’s been in the business for three decades and never heard a single complaint about the tune or its lyrics.

“If you want to play the politically correct game, there are tons of songs (with explicit lyrics) that have slipped past the censors over the years,” he said, such as Lou Reed’s Take A Walk On The Wild Side and Alannis Morisette’s You Oughta Know.

Kroeger said he respects the decision by stations in Edmonton and Halifax to put the original version on “repeat” for one consecutive hour.

CITI FM moved in the opposite direction. Scott Armstrong, the station’s general manager and program director, says Money for Nothing won’t be on its playlist at all anymore.

As a policy, they only present songs as they were originally released on album and they don’t play any songs that have been censored.

“We’re not prepared to play the edited version that does exist of that song,” he said.

David Drake, assistant program director at BOB FM, said his station has been playing the edited version for several years.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca

— with files from Kevin Rollason, The Canadian Press